Often I would prefer to have a monitor where the screen is higher than it is wide. I find text is easier to read this way, with shorter lines, and more closely resembles the printed page. This got me thinking…
Some computer cases are built so they can be placed horizontally on the desktop or vertically as a tower. It would be very easy to build a monitor like this which could be used in both portrait and landscape positions.
Then all you need is a video card that supports this which would be pretty straightforward. My card already supports different resolutions and it would be easy to provide new settings for the “portrait” vertical position.
It would even be fairly easy to have the monitor autodetect its position.
Does anybody know of any monitors / video cards that support this?
When I worked at a publishing company about 5 years ago they had all the monitors like this. The monitors were built on a swivelly cradle that allowed you to turn it either way, and there was software that adjusted the display accordingly.
Unfortunately it was my first computer and I had no context for how relatively unusual that was and I made no effort to remember what the setup was. But yes, it’s out there.
The webpad that my company is going to be using (and hopefully the rest of you will eventually be using it too in some contexts ), does both landscape and portrait modes. It’s very neat.
My dad’s friend had a monitor like that. It was cool. You grabbed the thing, jerked it clockwise 90 degrees, and it would switch to portrait position. Way nifty.
A company I worked for some years ago had a ‘page’ monitor, the viewing area was in the shape of a portrait sheet of paper. That b&w monitor came from the states and had a graphics card which was inserted into the base of the computer. It worked pretty well. I haven’t seen any since then. I guess people just get 21 inch monitors now…
Primarily used in MAC’s and workstations although PC adapters and drivers exist for some of these these units. The complexity and cost to engineer and manufacture these units did not justify sales for many pivoting models when price of other fixed 17"-21" monitors began falling several years ago. People asked why they should spend big dollars for a pivoting 15"-17" display when they could get a less expensive 19"- 21" display with almost the same ability to show a page and more overall functionality for other uses.
Portrait monitors are still used in many specialized applications (publishing layout, financial and medical uses)but I don’t know if any switchable (pivoting) ones are still being made.
I used to have a Radius Pivot. It was mostly reliable, but would occasionally glitch when pivoting. The screen would flash, there would be an audible ‘pop’, then the screen would go black for a few seconds. This was not the behavior that it exhibited when I first purchased it and I suspect that this could have caused long term reliability problems. I replaced it shortly thereafter with a 21" because I was doing a lot of engineering drawings where I needed the most screen area I could get.
There was another page display that came out shortly after the Pivot, but I can’t remember much about it except that it didn’t pivot. You had to manually flip it, which is probably why it never realized any success.
Of course, many of today’s LCD monitors can flip… just thought I’d point that out…
Thanks all for the input. It just seems like video cards do not normally support this. It seems such an easy feature to include in the video card and I am not even asking the monitor pivot easily. Just that you can put it on its side. I would think this could be done with little or no extra cost.
), does both landscape and portrait modes. It’s very neat.